The SNAP fission-powered program didn’t end with SNAPSHOT, far from it. While the SNAP reactors only ever flew once, their design was mature, well-tested, and in most particulars ready to fly in a short time – and the problems associated with those particulars had been well-addressed on the nuclear side of things. The Rankine power conversion system for the SNAP-2, which went through five iterations, reached technological maturity as well, having operated in a non-nuclear environment for close to 5,000 hours and remained in excellent condition, meaning that the 10,000 hour requirement for the PCS would be able to be met without any significant challenges. The thermoelectric power conversion system also continued to be developed, focusing on an advanced silicon-germanium thermoelectric convertor, which was highly sensitive to fabrication and manufacturing processes – however, we’ll look more at thermoelectrics in the power conversion systems series of blog posts, just keep in mind that the power conversion systems continued to improve throughout this time, not just the reactor core design.
On the reactor side of things, the biggest challenge was definitely hydrogen migration within the fuel elements. As the hydrogen migrates away from the ZrH fuel, many problems occur; from unpredictable reactivity within the fuel elements, to temperature changes (dehydrogenated fuel elements developed hotspots – which in turn drove more hydrogen out of the fuel element), to changes in ductility of the fuel, causing major headaches for end-of-life behavior of the reactors and severely limiting the fuel element temperature that could be achieved. However, the necessary testing for the improvement of those systems could easily be conducted with less-expensive reactor tests, including the SCA4 test-bed, and didn’t require flight architecture testing to continue to be improved.
The maturity of these two reactors led to a short-lived program in the 1960s to improve them, the SNAP Reactor Improvement Program. The SNAP-2 and -10 reactors went through many different design changes, some large and some small – and some leading to new reactor designs based on the shared reactor core architecture.
By this time, the SNAP-2 had mostly faded into obscurity. However, the fact that it shared a reactor core with the SNAP-10A, and that the power conversion system was continuing to improve, warranted some small studies to improve its capabilities. The two of note that are independent of the core (all of the design changes for the -10 that will be discussed can be applied to the -2 core as well, since at this point they were identical) are the change from a single mercury boiler to three, to allow more power throughput and to reduce loads on one of the more challenging components, and combining multiple cores into a single power unit. These were proposed together for a space station design (which we’ll look at later) to allow an 11 kWe power supply for a crewed station.
The vast majority of this work was done on the -10A. Any further reactors of this type would have had an additional three sets of 1/8” beryllium shims on the external reflector, increasing the initial reactivity by about 50 cents (1 dollar of reactivity is exactly break even, all other things being equal; reactivity potential is often somewhere around $2-$3, however, to account for fission product buildup); this means that additional burnable poisons (elements which absorb neutrons, then decay into something that is mostly neutron transparent, to even out the reactivity of the reactor over its lifetime) could be inserted in the core at construction, mitigating the problems of reactivity loss that were experienced during earlier operation of the reactor. With this, and a number of other minor tweaks to reflector geometry and lowering the core outlet temperature slightly, the life of the SNAP-10A was able to be extended from the initial design goal of one year to five years of operation. The end-of-life power level of the improved -10A was 39.5 kWt, with an outlet temperature of 980 F (527°C) and a power density of 0.14 kWt/lb (0.31 kWt/kg).
Thes
e design modifications led to another iteration of the SNAP-10A, the Interim SNAP-10A/2 (I-10A/2). This reactor’s core was identical, but the reflector was further enhanced, and the outlet temperature and reactor power were both increased. In addition, even more burnable poisons were added to the core to account for the higher power output of the reactor. Perhaps the biggest design change with the Interim -10A/2 was the method of reactor control: rather than the passive control of the reactor, as was done on the -10A, the entire period of operation for the I-10A/2 was actively controlled, using the control drums to manage reactivity and power output of the reactor. As with the improved -10A design, this reactor would be able to have an operational lifetime of five years. These improvements led the I-10A/2 to have an end of life power rating of 100 kWt, an outlet temperature of 1200 F (648°C), and an improved power density of 0.33 kWt/lb (0.73 kWt/kg).
This design, in turn, led to the Upgraded SNAP-10A/2 (U-10A/2). The biggest in-core difference between the I-10A/2 and the U-10A/2 was the hydrogen barrier used in the fuel elements: rather than using the initial design that was common to the -2, -10A, and I-10A/2, this reactor used the hydrogen barrier from the SNAP-8 reactor, which we’ll look at in the next blog post. This is significant, because the degradation of the hydrogen barrier over time, and the resulting loss of hydrogen from the fuel elements, was the major lifetime limiting factor of the SNAP-10 variants up until this point. This reactor also went back to static control, rather than the active control used in the I-10A/2. As with the other -10A variants, the U-10A/2 had a possible core lifetime of five years, and other than an improvement of 100 F in outlet temperature (to 1300 F), and a marginal drop in power density to 0.31 kWt/lb, it shared many of the characteristics that the I-10A/2 had.
SNAP-10B: The Upgrade that Could Have Been
One consistent mass penalty in the SNAP-10A variants that we’ve looked at so far is the control drums: relatively large reactivity insertions were possible with a minimum of movement due to the wide profile of the control drums, but this also meant that they extended well away from the reflector, especially early in the mission. This meant that, in order to prevent neutron backscatter from hitting the rest of the spacecraft, the shield had to be relatively wide compared the the size of the core – and the shield was not exactly a lightweight system component.
The SNAP-10B reactor was designed to address this problem. It used a similar core to the U-10A/2, with the upgraded hydrogen barrier from the -8, but the reflector was tapered to better fit the profile of the shadow shield, and axially sliding control cylinders would be moved in and out to provide control instead of the rotating drums of the -10A variants. A number of minor reactor changes were needed, and some of the reactor physics parameters changed due to this new control system; but, overall, very few modifications were needed.
The first -10B reactor, the -10B Basic (B-10B), was a very simple and direct evolution of the U-10A/2, with nothing but the reflector and control structures changed to the -10B configuration. Other than a slight drop in power density (to 0.30 kWt/lb), the rest of the performance characteristics of the B-10B were identical to the U-10A/2. This design would have been a simple evolution of the -10A/2, with a slimmer profile to help with payload integration challenges.
The next iteration of the SNAP-10B, the Advanced -10B (A-10B), had options for significant changes to the reactor core and the fuel elements themselves. One thing to keep in mind about these reactors is that they were being designed above and beyond any specific mission needs; and, on top of that, a production schedule hadn’t been laid out for them. This means that many of the design characteristics of these reactors were never “frozen,” which is the point in the design process when the production team of engineers need to have a basic configuration that won’t change in order to proceed with the program, although obviously many minor changes (and possibly some major ones) would continue to be made up until the system was flight qualified.
Up until now, every SNAP-10 design used a 37 fuel element core, with the only difference in the design occurring in the Upgraded -10A/2 and Basic -10B reactors (which changed the hydrogen barrier ceramic enamel inside the fuel element clad). However, with the A-10B there were three core size options: the first kept the 37 fuel element core, a medium-sized 55-element core, and a large 85-element core. There were other questions about the final design, as well, looking at two other major core changes (as well as a lot of open minor questions). The first option was to add a “getter,” a sheath of hydrophilic (highly hydrogen-absorbing) metal to the clad outside the steel casing, but still within the active region of the core. While this isn’t as ideal as containing the hydrogen within the U-ZrH itself, the neutron moderation provided by the hydrogen would be lost at a far lower rate. The second option was to change the core geometry itself, as the temperature of the core changed, with devices called “Thermal Coefficient Augmenters” (TCA). There were two options that were suggested: first, there was a bellows system that was driven by NaK core temperature (using ruthenium vapor), which moves a portion of the radial reflector to change the core’s reactivity coefficient; second, the securing grids for the fuel elements themselves would expand as the NaK increased in temperature, and contract as the coolant dropped in temperature.
Between the options available, with core size, fuel element design, and variable core and fuel element configuration all up in the air, the Advanced SNAP-10B was a wide range of reactors, rather than just one. Many of the characteristics of the reactors remained identical, including the fissile fuel itself, the overall core size, maximum outlet temperature, and others. However, the number of fuel elements in the core alone resulted in a wide range of different power outputs; and, which core modification the designers ultimately decided upon (Getter vs TCA, I haven’t seen any indication that the two were combined) would change what the capabilities of the reactor core would actually be. However, both for simplicity’s sake, and due to the very limited documentation available on the SNAP-10B program, other than a general comparison table from the SNAP Systems Capability Study from 1966, we’ll focus on the 85 fuel element core of the two options: the Getter core and the TCA core.
A final note, which isn’t clear from these tables: each of these reactor cores was nominally optimized to a 100 kWt power output, the additional fuel elements reduced the power density required at any time from the core in order to maximize fuel lifetime. Even with the improved hydrogen barriers, and the variable core geometry, while these systems CAN offer higher power, it comes at the cost of a shorter – but still minimum one year – life on the reactor system. Because of this, all reported estimates assumed a 100 kWt power level unless otherwise stated.
The idea of a hydrogen “getter” was not a new one at the time that it was proposed, but it was one that hadn’t been investigated thoroughly at that point (and is a very niche requirement in terrestrial nuclear engineering). The basic concept is to get the second-best option when it comes to hydrogen migration: if you can’t keep the hydrogen in your fuel element itself, then the next best option is keeping it in the active region of the core (where fission is occurring, and neutron moderation is the most directly useful for power production). While this isn’t as good as increasing the chance of neutron capture within the fuel element itself, it’s still far better than hydrogen either dissolving into your coolant, or worse yet, migrating outside your reactor and into space, where it’s completely useless in terms of reactor dynamics. Of course, there’s a trade-off: because of the interplay between the various aspects of reactor physics and design, it wasn’t practical to change the external geometry of the fuel elements themselves – which means that the only way to add a hydrogen “getter” was to displace the fissile fuel itself. There’s definitely an optimization question to be considered; after all, the overall reactivity of the reactor will have to be reduced because the fuel is worth more in terms of reactivity than the hydrogen that would be lost, but the hydrogen containment in the core at end of life means that the system itself would be more predictable and reliable. Especially for a static control system like the A-10B, this increase in behavioral predictability can be worth far more than the reactivity that the additional fuel would offer. Of the materials options that were tested for the “getter” system, yttrium metal was found to be the most effective at the reactor temperatures and radiation flux that would be present in the A-10B core. However, while improvements had been made in the fuel element design to the point that the “getter” program continued until the cancellation of the SNAP-2/10 core experiments, there were many uncertainties left as to whether the concept was worth employing in a flight system.
The second option was to vary the core geometry with temperature, the Thermal Coefficient Augmentation (TCA) variant of the A-10B. This would change the reactivity of the reactor mechanically, but not require active commands from any systems outside the core itself. There were two options investigated: a bellows arrangement, and a design for an expanding grid holding the fuel elements themselves.
The first variant used a bellows to move a portion of the reflector out as the temperature increased. This was done using a ruthenium reservoir within the core itself. As the NaK increased in temperature, the ruthenium would boil, pushing a bellows which would move some of the beryllium shims away from the reactor vessel, reducing the overall worth of the radial reflector. While this sounds simple in theory, gas diffusion from a number of different sources (from fission products migrating through the clad to offgassing of various components) meant that the gas in the bellows would not just be ruthenium vapor. While this could have been accounted for, a lot of study would have needed to have been done with a flight-type system to properly model the behavior.
The second option would change the distance between the fuel elements themselves, using base plate with concentric accordion folds for each ring of fuel elements called the “convoluted baseplate.” As the NaK heated beyond optimized design temperature, the base plates would expand radially, separating the fuel elements and reducing the reactivity in the core. This involved a different set of materials tradeoffs, with just getting the device constructed causing major headaches. The design used both 316 stainless steel and Hastelloy C in its construction, and was cold annealed. The alternative, hot annealing, resulted in random cracks, and while explosive manufacture was explored it wasn’t practical to map the shockwave propagation through such a complex structure to ensure reliable construction at the time.
While this is certainly a concept that has caused me to think a lot about the concept of a variable reactor geometry of this nature, there are many problems with this approach (which could have possibly been solved, or proven insurmountable). Major lifetime concerns would include ductility and elasticity changes through the wide range of temperatures that the baseplate would be exposed to; work hardening of the metal, thermal stresses, and neutron bombardment considerations of the base plates would also be a major concern in this concept.
These design options were briefly tested, but most of these ended up not being developed fully. Because the reactor’s design was never frozen, many engineering challenges remained in every option that had been presented. Also, while I know that a report was written on the SNAP-10B reactor’s design (R. J . Gimera, “SNAP 1OB Reactor Conceptual Design,” NAA-SR-10422), I can’t find it… yet. This makes writing about the design difficult, to say the least.
Because of this, and the extreme paucity of documentation on this later design, it’s time to turn to what these innovative designs could have offered when it comes to actual missions.
References and Additional Reading
Overall Program
SNAP 2 REACTOR ADVANCED PERFORMANCE CAPABILITY STUDY, 1964
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4482699
Progress Reports
QUARTERLY PROGRESS REPORTS
APRIL – JUNE 1962 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4483464
Decommissioning and Safety
SNAP Improvement Program
A Reliability Improvement Program Planning Report for the SNAP 10A Space Nuclear Power Unit 1961 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/966760
Static Control of SNAP Reactors, Birney et al 1966 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1029222/m2/1/high_res_d/4468078.pdf
SNAP Systems Capabilities Vol 2, Study Introduction, Reactors, Shielding, Atomics International 1965 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4480419
SNAP Reactor Improvement Program
APRIL – JUNE 1964 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4483462
April-June 1965 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4467051
JULY-SEPTEMBER 1965 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4487034
JANUARY – MARCH 1966 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4480192
SNAP General Supporting Technology
Progress Report for SNAP General Supporting Technology May-July 1964 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4480424/